Self-Service That Delights Customers: How IBM’s Partner Ecosystem Is Leveraging Generative AI Assistants in Banking and Finance

With the transformative benefits promised by generative artificial intelligence (AI), the banking and finance sector is at an inflection point. From redefining a bank’s competitive advantage in customer relationships to streamlining core banking operations and strengthening cyber resilience, AI technologies have the potential to unlock a wealth of new opportunities.

Institutions are already seizing this opportunity. The 2024 Global Outlook for Banking and Financial Markets report from the IBM Institute for Business Value (IBM IBV) revealed that 78% of 600 executives surveyed are tactically deploying generative AI in at least one use case.

Generative AI assistants are a popular entry point, and for good reason. After the COVID-19 pandemic caused a surge in adoption of virtual agent technologies, companies are now discovering how adding generative AI to the mix can be beneficial. Forward-thinking organizations can remove friction from customer self-service experiences across any device or channel, increasing employee productivity and enabling large-scale adoption.

The IBM Partner Ecosystem helps banks and financial institutions realize their generative AI dreams with IBM watsonx™ Assistant, a next-generation conversational AI solution. Click here to see use cases and benefits by industry.

Automating customer service for maximum efficiency

Insurance can be complicated, and customers naturally want things to be as simple as possible when interacting with providers. Generali Polska, which offers comprehensive insurance services, noticed that its customer service consultants spent most of their time answering basic questions over and over again and managing simple claims and policy changes.

The insurer has joined forces with IBM Business Partner® TUATARA to reimagine customer service. Within a month, Generali Polska introduced Leon, a virtual assistant built with action.bot from TUATARA, based on IBM watsonx Assistant.

Leon now handles over 97% of customer conversations without having to redirect them to agents. As a result, Generali Polska saves around 120 person-hours per month and has reduced the working time of customer consultants by one hour per day. Within a month of launch, the company recorded 2.5 times more customer interactions with the chatbot than with previous consultants.

Building on Technology Leadership

TUATARA also helped leading cooperative bank BS Brodnica continue to challenge the status quo in customer service. The organization, which was one of the first cooperative banks in Poland to offer digital banking services, decided to use AI automation to provide its customers with access to immediate, high-quality technical support.

As a result, Piotr was born. Also based on TUATARA’s action.bot and IBM’s watsonx Assistant, Piotr is a virtual assistant that is fully integrated with the bank’s knowledge base. Within three months, Piotr got to work immediately, taking part in 1,000 calls in two months. To date, the virtual assistant has achieved a 90% accuracy rate in answering support queries, a number that is set to increase with built-in learning capabilities.

As Grzegorz Głowacki, Member of the Management Board for IT and Innovation at BS Brodnica sums up: “Thanks to cooperation with IBM and TUATARA, BS Brodnica increases customer satisfaction, strengthens its competitive advantage and strengthens its position as the most innovative cooperative bank in Poland.”

Connecting the dots

Entrepreneurial fintech innovators are seeing the potential of generative AI to create compelling new service offerings for their clients. One such case is Asteria, an IBM Business Partner based in Stockholm, Sweden. They worked with IBM Client Engineering to build Asteria Smart Finance Advisor, a new virtual assistant based on IBM watsonx Assistant, IBM Watson® Discovery, and IBM® watsonx.ai™ AI studio.

Asteria Smart Finance Advisor gives Asteria SME clients instant insight into the financial health of their businesses. The virtual advisor can also answer financial questions and advise them on which products are most relevant to their specific business and financial situation.

An inspiring example of an IBM Business Partner that has leveraged IBM technologies to deliver tangible benefits to its customers is Asteria, which found in a pilot that it could reduce the time spent advising on loan applications by 33% with IBM Watsonx™.

This pilot was just the beginning. Asteria plans to help its SME clients improve profitability, increase financial stability and improve financial literacy through broader implementation of its virtual advisor.

Bringing Customer Data to Life

Generative AI is also proving its worth in understanding customer behavior. Artefact, an IBM business partner based in Paris with 1,500 employees worldwide, used IBM’s watsonx.ai AI studio to help a major French bank gain insight into consumer habits.

A bank employee looking to understand how a particular type of customer might respond to a proposed offer first creates a target persona, such as a 20- to 30-year-old professional woman living in a large city. Artefact uses the target persona to model a virtual “cluster” of customers, with each cluster representing 2 to 3 million real customers. The employee can then interact with customer avatars generated by IBM’s watsonx.ai AI studio, asking them about their personal preferences and consumption habits.

A small Artefact team used IBM’s watsonx.ai AI studio to implement the entire solution, from backend to frontend, in just one month. Building on the success of this initial use case, Artefact is now working on a second generative AI project for the bank that will automatically generate targeted emails to customers.

Taking the next step

The 2024 IBM IBV CEO Study finds that product and service innovation will be a top priority for CEOs over the next 3 years, and generative AI will open the door to a whole new world of opportunities.

Generative AI assistants are an ideal entry point for financial and banking organizations looking to gain a foothold in this exciting new world. With the help of the IBM Partner Ecosystem, these institutions can effortlessly create assistants that delight customers while increasing profits.

If your organization is ready to explore the capabilities of IBM Watsonx Assistant and related technologies, try Watsonx Assistant for free or embed Watsonx into your solutions.

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